Literature and the Climate Emergency



Overview

This course examines representations of climate, biodiversity and environmental crises across a range of periods, and genres written in English. Drawing on critical frameworks from the environmental humanities, postcolonial ecocriticism, energy humanities, petrocultures, resource criticism, and ecopoetics, the course will explore the capacity of different literary forms, such as poetry, speculative fiction, cli-fi, and (creative) non-fiction, to represent, explore and address climate change and the ‘slow violence’ of the environmental crisis.  Reading these texts, we will concentrate on certain key questions, starting with:

  • What capacity do literary texts have to imagine alternative futures or relations to nature? 

  • How might literatures help provide a framework for how we think about real-world environmental issues?

  • In what way can literatures emphasize the link between social and environmental justice?

All texts will be supplemented with additional critical reading.

Programme details

Course starts: 30 Sep 2024

Week 1: Introduction: What matters to you?

Week 2: Pandemics, Disasters and Eco-Apocalypse: Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826)

Week 3: Afrofuturism and the Apocalypse: Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

Week 4: Indigenous Responses to the Climate Emergency: Sheila Watt-Cloutier, The Right to be Cold (2018)

Week 5: Flood/Petro Literatures: Megan Hunter, The End we Start from (2017); Ben Okri' The World Cries' (2023)

Week 6: Eco-Anxiety: Franny Choi, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (2022)

Week 7: The New Wilderness: Diane Cook, The New Wilderness (2022)

Week 8: Livable Futures: Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics (2022)

Week 9: 'We are all compost' - posthumanism and deep adaptation (Donna Haraway)

Week 10: Futures Thinking: What If?

Certification

To complete the course and receive a certificate, you will be required to attend at least 80% of the classes on the course and pass your final assignment. Upon successful completion, you will receive a link to download a University of Oxford digital certificate. Information on how to access this digital certificate will be emailed to you after the end of the course. The certificate will show your name, the course title and the dates of the course you attended. You will be able to download your certificate or share it on social media if you choose to do so.

Fees

Description Costs
Course Fee £285.00
Take this course for CATS points £30.00

Funding

If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit, you are a full-time student in the UK or a student on a low income, you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees. Please see the below link for full details:

Concessionary fees for short courses

Tutor

Professor Nicole Pohl

Nicole Pohl is Professor Emerit at Oxford Brookes University. She has published and edited books on women's utopian writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, European salons, utopia and the Anthropocene. She is the Academic Editor of Electronic Enlightenment, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University. 

Course aims

  • To introduce students how literature historically and in the present has engaged with ecological issues

  • To highlight how literature underscores the interconnectedness between the biodiversity and climate emergencies, and social injustice

  • To familiarize students with world literature (postcolonial; indigenous writing) and environmental criticism through the analysis of literature

  • To explore how this writing draws on traditional modes of literatures, and adapts them in a changing world to form new genres such as ‘cli-fi’, speculative fiction, petro fiction, flood fiction, and creative non-fiction

Teaching methods

Two-hour weekly seminars with mini-lectures at the beginning and then classroom discussions.

There will be a workshop session (Futures Thinking) in one of the weeks to assess and reflect on what we have discussed and learnt.

 

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course students will be expected to:

1. Demonstrate good knowledge of a range of environmental writing both fiction and non-fiction.
2. Demonstrate a critical understanding of and analyse the context in which these writers are working.
3. Understand and evaluate some of the key contemporary critical and eco-political approaches to climate change debates
4. Analyse and write on environment and landscape in a critical and persuasive way.

 

Assessment methods

Essay: 1500 words due at the end of the course.

Coursework is an integral part of all weekly classes and everyone enrolled will be expected to do coursework in order to benefit fully from the course. Only those who have registered for credit will be awarded CATS points for completing work the required standard.

Students must submit a completed Declaration of Authorship form at the end of term when submitting your final piece of work. CATS points cannot be awarded without the aforementioned form - Declaration of Authorship form

Application

To earn credit (CATS points) for your course you will need to register and pay an additional £30 fee per course. You can do this by ticking the relevant box at the bottom of the enrolment form or when enrolling online.

Please use the 'Book' or 'Apply' button on this page. Alternatively, please complete an Enrolment Form (Word) or Enrolment Form (Pdf)

Level and demands

The Department's Weekly Classes are taught at FHEQ Level 4, i.e. first year undergraduate level, and you will be expected to engage in a significant amount of private study in preparation for the classes. This may take the form, for instance, of reading and analysing set texts, responding to questions or tasks, or preparing work to present in class.

Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATS)

To earn credit (CATS points) you will need to register and pay an additional £30 fee per course. You can do this by ticking the relevant box at the bottom of the enrolment form or when enrolling online. Students who register for CATS points will receive a Record of CATS points on successful completion of their course assessment.

Students who do not register for CATS points during the enrolment process can either register for CATS points prior to the start of their course or retrospectively from the January 1st after the current full academic year has been completed. If you are enrolled on the Certificate of Higher Education you need to indicate this on the enrolment form but there is no additional registration fee.

Terms & conditions for applicants and students

Information on financial support